Before we build anything, we work with your nervous system. RSD (Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria) fires before thought. Your body reacts to perceived rejection in milliseconds, and by the time you’re aware of what’s happening, the behavioral response is already running. You can’t process shame, learn tools, or shift patterns if your nervous system doesn’t have the capacity to hold any of it. Regulation comes first because everything else depends on it.

Once your nervous system has enough capacity, we can touch the shame — the years of being told you’re too much, too sensitive, too reactive, too messy. The “I should be able to do this” voice. The “I’m too much” story. The belief that something is fundamentally wrong with you. That shame isn’t a side effect of ADHD, it’s the thing keeping you stuck. And it can only be addressed when the nervous system is regulated enough to hold it without flooding.

RSD doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It shows up in your closest relationships, your work dynamics, your friendships, even your interactions with strangers. We explore how rejection sensitivity shapes the way you show up relationally — the transparency you withhold, the conflicts you avoid, the ways you perform safety instead of feeling it.

We use Internal Family Systems (IFS), to work with the different parts of you that are trying to protect you — the overexplainer, the people-pleaser, the part that shuts down, the part that monitors everyone’s facial expressions. We don’t fight them. We understand them. And then we help them do their jobs differently.

Once the nervous system has capacity and the shame has been addressed, tools and strategies actually work. Not because you’re trying harder, but because the foundation can hold them now.